Debate schmebate

Great. We’re having a another presidential debate tomorrow. I predict it will be a debacle.

I won’t predict who will win, because that is going to be shaped by people’s subjective impressions and the way impressions will be shaped by the media. And one thing I can definitely predict is that the media will fuck it up.

The first thing to say about the hate and scorn currently directed at the mainstream US media is that they worked hard to earn it. They’ve done so by failing, repeatedly, determinedly, spectacularly to do their job, which is to maintain their independence, inform the electorate, and speak truth to power. While the left has long had reasons to dismiss centrist media, and the right has loathed it most when it did do its job well, the moderates who are furious at it now seem to be something new – and a host of former editors, media experts and independent journalists have been going after them hard this summer.

Longtime journalist James Fallows declares that three institutions – the Republican party, the supreme court, and the mainstream political press – “have catastrophically failed to ‘meet the moment’ under pressure of [the] Trump era”. Centrist political reformer and columnist Norm Ornstein states that these news institutions “have had no reflection, no willingness to think through how irresponsible and reckless so much of our mainstream press and so many of our journalists have been and continue to be”.

Most voters, he says, “have no clue what a second Trump term would actually be like. Instead, we get the same insipid focus on the horse race and the polls, while normalizing abnormal behavior and treating this like a typical presidential election, not one that is an existential threat to democracy.”

This debate shouldn’t be happening, because in a functional democracy the senile narcissist running for the Republican party should have been repudiated long ago.

I wish I had more prairie progressives around here

I’m conflicted about this cartoon.

It’s true that I’ve met some ferociously progressive people living in this rural red part of the state — but it’s still red. The majority of voters in these parts voted for Trump in the last election, for instance. They put up anti-abortion signs and sign up for the NRA and drive megamonster trucks.

So don’t go too far in either direction. The rural midwest is complicated.

Wohl and Burkman sneak back into politics!

These two clowns, Jacob Wohl and Jack Burkman, have a long history of failed ratfucking.

In 2020, the two hired actors to stage a fake FBI raid on Burkman’s house and tricked The Washington Post into writing up the phony incident. Wohl used the Klein surname in that incident, too.

The year before, Wohl was charged in California for selling an unregistered security as part of a plot to create fake news items to make money in political betting markets. He pled guilty to four felony counts and was sentenced to two years of probation, according to court records in Riverside County.

Wohl and Burkman drew attention a few years ago by trying to frame multiple public figures, including former Special Counsel Robert Mueller and current Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, for sexual assaults. They conducted other outlandish smear campaigns, including hiring a woman to say that Anthony Fauci had assaulted her and allegedly stealing a USAID employee’s phone to send out tweets blasting the foreign aid agency as “anti-Christian.”

Among the conspiracy theories that Wohl has pushed include saying in 2020 that Biden had tested positive for Covid and would die in 30 days, that Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) had a relationship with a former Marine and that Vice President Kamala Harris wasn’t eligible to run for president in the 2020 cycle.

There are other instances, like the time they came to Minneapolis to ‘prove’ that Ilhan Omar was incestuously married to her brother, and called the west bank of the U of Minnesota “little Mogadishu”. My favorite flop, though, was when they hired an ex-Marine to claim he’d been scarred by violent sex with Elizabeth Warren. They’re absolutely nuts and impressively bad at their con games.

They’re so bad that now they operate under pseudonyms.

A Washington startup pitched as a service to integrate AI into lobbying is covertly run by a pair of well-known, far-right conspiracy theorists and convicted felons who are using pseudonyms in their new business, according to four former employees as well as photo and email evidence.

LobbyMatic was founded last year by Jacob Wohl, who in 2022 was convicted along with his longtime associate Jack Burkman of felony telecom fraud after running a robocall campaign in largely Black neighborhoods in several states telling people not to vote by mail. An Ohio judge ordered them to spend 500 hours registering people to vote, and the Federal Communications Commission fined them $5 million.

In his role as a founder and CEO of the new firm, Wohl uses the name “Jay Klein,” according to the former employees and emails obtained by POLITICO. Burkman uses the pseudonym “Bill Sanders,” the former employees said.

Ha ha, you laugh. Nobody will fall for this.

Their lobbying group has already signed up some big name clients, including Toyota. The corporate lobbying game in Washington DC is a fruitful market for grifters, I guess.

You need an atheist to explain you should respect grieving families?

If you want to see a classic case study of how the American media has degenerated into uselessness, look at how they’re handling the Arlington scuffle. They’ve been skirting around the issue, trying to avoid the blunt truth: the Trump campaign is run by a gang of boors who are incapable of courtesy and restraint. At least the Columbia Journalism Review tells it like it is.

On Tuesday, NPR’s Quil Lawrence and Tom Bowman broke the news that Trump and members of his campaign appeared to violate federal law during an appearance at Arlington to mark the third anniversary of the deadly attack on US troops that punctuated the deeply flawed withdrawal from Afghanistan. Members of Trump’s staff had sought to film the event for a campaign video, and got into an altercation with an Arlington National Cemetery staff member who tried to stop them. Steven Cheung, a Trump campaign official, strongly denied that any altercation had taken place and said the campaign was ready to release a video to prove his point. (They have yet to release it.) It wasn’t surprising that these two NPR pros with deep knowledge of the military, and sources among veterans, were the first with the news. The Washington Post followed with a story the same day, as did the New York Times. The public took note.

As more publications followed suit, the Arlington stories suffered a dreadful fate: they all started to sound the same. News outlets ended up with articles bogged down in parsing federal law, carefully defining what exactly counts as an altercation, and quoting milquetoast official statements like “There was an incident and a report was filed.”

Look. I’m a heretical atheist who is blunt and sometimes rude about disrespecting religious traditions, but even I know that you have to be kind and circumspect with grieving families (do I even need to say something so obvious?) I spent some time in civilian cemeteries in July, and even there I knew you don’t make a scene. You don’t annoy people in those circumstances, and you don’t make excuses. You apologize, you back away, you stop what you’re doing. Not the Trump campaign!

Lumped together, the reporting this week left readers and listeners, especially those with no knowledge of the military, at a loss to understand what actually happened—and, crucially, why it mattered so much. The Trump campaign team had successfully muddied the waters by alleging that the photographer had been invited to the event by family members of soldiers buried there.

I don’t care if you found someone who invited you to caper in a graveyard, you’re supposed to be considerate to all the people visiting. Trump was of course politicizing the most recent deaths so he can criticize Biden. It was tacky and inappropriate.

But as any veteran knows in their bones, the solemnity of the ceremony is exactly why the unauthorized photographer had no business being there—regardless of who invited them. Section 60, the part of the cemetery where the incident occurred, is one of the most sacred places for this generation of troops. It is where those who were killed in Iraq and Afghanistan are buried. Those graves are visited not by tourists looking for historical figures, but by mothers and fathers visiting their fallen son or daughter. In Section 60, wounds are still raw. Political activity there is never appropriate, and under the law, only cemetery staffers and approved photographers are permitted to film or take pictures there.

Readers needed to know that, when you visit Arlington, you might not know exactly what you’re supposed to do when confronted by those rows of headstones, but you damn sure know what you’re not supposed to do. But the coverage this week left many readers with the impression that the whole thing might have been a bureaucratic mix-up, or some tedious violation of protocol. It focused on bland horse-race coverage so common during election season, rather than clearly stating what really took place: an egregious and willful violation of long-standing norms. What was missing from the coverage was a willingness to quickly and decisively state what a grievous insult the whole debacle was to the dignity of Arlington. The sacred had been profaned.

I don’t believe in the sacred, but otherwise, yes: the Trump campaign has insulted the military and the dead. Own it, Donald. Making excuses just makes it worse. It’s time for him to apologize…which may not be possible for him.

You don’t get to control teacher’s lives once they go home

In the 19th century, there was a different set of rules for teachers.

Among the terrible crimes: “Any teacher who smokes, uses liquor in any form, frequents pool or public halls, or gets shaved in a barber shop will give good reason to suspect his worth, intention, integrity, and honesty.” But also “Women teachers who marry or engage in unseemly conduct will be dismissed.” Those were the old conservatives. The new conservatives are just as dictatorial and demanding, but they have some different rules.


“And I think our conservative idea is that parents and families should determine what children learn and what values they are brought up with. It’s so many leaders of the left. I hate to be so personal about this, but they are people without kids who try to brainwash the minds of our children,” Vance said in the clip.

“And that disorients me. And it disturbs me. Randi Weingarten, who’s the head of the most powerful teacher’s union in the country, doesn’t have a single child, he added.

“If she wants to be brainwashed and destroy the minds of children, she should have some of her own and leave ours the hell alone.”

So the party that thinks all women should be traditional homemakers, and doesn’t want to invest a penny on childcare, now thinks that skilled professional teachers should be required to have children.

How about if you leave the private lives of teachers the hell alone?

Wow, but Vance sure is a creepy weird autocrat. Don’t elect him, OK?

Did you know that Kamala Harris is a communist?

Some billionaires told me so.

Meanwhile, the communists I know are all saying “Kamala Harris, Tim Walz, and the rest: We don’t need your “promise of America”—we need a revolution to put an end to your system” and are pointing out that Harris and Walz are “putting the joy in genocide”. I guess they aren’t real communists? I should listen to Trump & Musk when they tell me what communism is?

It’s all so confusing.

Checking the fact-checkers

There was a channel on YouTube called “Cinema Sins” (maybe there still is) which would go through recent movies, nit-picking over every continuity error and anachronism and just stuff they didn’t like. It became a parody of itself, though, because the creators were locked into the paradigm of finding as many errors as possible — their entire schtick was based on tallying up huge numbers of sins to the point that they had to start inventing them. Shaun dissected them thoroughly. That ‘sin counter’ tally on their videos had to keep going up, you know!

The latest sport on Bluesky is doing a Shaun to the newspaper fact-checkers who are struggling so hard to justify their existence by finding something, anything to criticize about speeches at the Democratic National Convention. In particular, I see a lot of piling on of the odious Glenn Kessler. The poor man takes his job very seriously. He’s motivated to make sure he gets column inches by finding something to write about, which would be a worthy occupation, except that he keeps calling into question statements that aren’t literal quotes. “Summarizing” or “condensing” the overall message of a political group is a sin!

For instance, one speech highlights the family policy of the Republican party.

“Page 451 says the only legitimate family is a married mother and father where only the father works.”

— Colorado Gov. Jared Polis

It’s a matter of interpretation. Polis was one of several speakers during the convention who have highlighted passages in a Heritage Foundation report called “Mandate for Leadership,” a 922-page catalogue of conservative proposals that is popularly known as Project 2025.

But the report’s Page 451 does not use the words that Polis suggested he was quoting, nor does it say that mothers should not work. On that page is a proposal for the Department of Health and Human Services to promote “stable and flourishing married families.”

But here’s what page 451 says. It’s true, Polis was not accurately quoting the literal words of Project 2025.

Goal #3: Promoting Stable and Flourishing Married Families. Families comprised of a married mother, father, and their children are the foundation of a well-ordered nation and healthy society. Unfortunately, family policies and programs under President Biden’s HHS are fraught with agenda items focusing on “LGBTQ+ equity,” subsidizing single-motherhood, disincentivizing work, and penalizing marriage. These policies should be repealed and replaced by policies that support the formation of stable, married, nuclear families. Working fathers are essential to the well-being and development of their children, but the United States is experiencing a crisis of fatherlessness that is ruining our children’s futures. In the overwhelming number of cases, fathers insulate children from physical and sexual abuse, financial difficulty or poverty, incarceration, teen pregnancy, poor educational outcomes, high school failure, and a host of behavioral and psychological problems. By contrast, homes with non-related “boyfriends” present are among the most dangerous place for a child to be. HHS should prioritize married father engagement in its messaging, health, and welfare policies.
In the context of current and emerging reproductive technologies, HHS policies should never place the desires of adults over the right of children to be raised by the biological fathers and mothers who conceive them. In cases involving biological parents who are found by a court to be unfit because of abuse or neglect, the process of adoption should be speedy, certain, and supported generously by HHS

It’s only hinting at their plans with explicit opposition to LGBT+ equity, the nuclear family, and the importance of working fathers. We also have all the other things Republicans have said about their desire to return to a stereotyped version of 1950. Good work, Glenn.

Most irritating is this complaint about Tim Walz characterizing a well-known Republican policy.

“They’ll repeal the Affordable Care Act. They’ll gut Social Security and Medicare, and they will ban abortion across this country with or without Congress.”

— Vice-presidential nominee Tim Walz

The problem?

This is speculative. Trump has insisted he will not touch Social Security or Medicare — and he largely kept to that pledge during his presidency.

He also said he wouldn’t touch Roe v. Wade, as did several nominees to the Supreme Court. Yet somehow, it got “touched” and touched hard. Does Kessler assume that Republicans never lie? Programs like Social Security and Medicare and abortion are popular, so politicians avoid being direct in their plans, because that would make them lose. Glenn Kessler plays the Republican game of pretending circumlocutions are effective at hiding their intent.

As for abortion, Trump has said the Supreme Court sent the matter to the states and that each state can set its own policies. But many conservative allies are eager to restrict abortion rights even further, perhaps using old laws on the books (such as the Comstock Act of 1873) in new and aggressive ways. Walz hinted at that by saying Trump would act “with or without Congress.”

Go back to that Project 2025 document Kessler just cited as evidence that, oh no, the Republicans aren’t actually interested in restoring the Patriarchy. Search for the word “abortion”.

There are 199 mentions.

You’ll have no problem finding quotes to substantiate Walz’s wild assertion.

That’s enough. Nitpicking the plain sense of Republicans, or the slimy evasions of certain fact-checkers, has already bored me and is an endless sinkhole of evasions and lies.